Strength in numbers

Ch. 3: Mexico's anti-trafficking forces are growing

Mexican Congresswoman Rosi Orozco comforts one of the women rescued from the human trafficking circuit, on an evening when several of the women were over at Orozco's home. Orozco's term in congress is expiring, but she is continuing the mission, as "pres
— Peggy Peattie / U-T San Diego

Mexican Congresswoman Rosi Orozco comforts one of the women rescued from the human trafficking circuit, on an evening when several of the women were over at Orozco's home. Orozco's term in congress is expiring, but she is continuing the mission, as "pres
— Peggy Peattie / U-T San Diego

An Inhumane Trade

Editor’s note: This package of stories, photos and video is a joint project between U-T San Diego and the International Center for Journalists, which provided funding from the Ford Foundation and the Brooks and Joan Fortune Family Foundation.

Mexico City -

After decades of free-flowing trafficking of sex and labor slaves in Mexico, a small but growing league of men and women across the country have undertaken the Sisyphean task of fighting back.

Doing so is not without peril.

Activists who have spoken out have been threatened. Law-enforcement officials who stood up to traffickers have been killed. Some journalists who have spotlighted the crime have lost their lives or faced threats so dire they have fled the country.

Mexico is equal parts destination, gateway to the U.S. and supplier to the rest of the world in terms of human trafficking. The country’s high rate of poverty, lack of education for all and lawlessness that has gripped it for years has created a fertile ground for kidnappings as well as wooing men and women with promises of good jobs or romancing teenagers with pledges of love. Regardless of how they were taken, victims eventually find themselves sold for sex or toiling to pay off high debt — abused, beaten and threatened with violence.

“If we don’t do anything, it will be the biggest crime in the world,” said Rosi Orozco, a former congresswoman and founder of a new nonprofit group focused on combatting human trafficking.

International and national human-rights groups estimate that Mexico has 70,000 to 100,000 sex-trafficking victims at any given time and that about 70 percent are underage, said Cuauhtémoc Ibarra, who oversaw the Special Commission Against Human Trafficking in Mexico City until August. The number of labor-trafficking victims is estimated to be much higher because they are less likely to report abuses and because no one is specifically looking for them, experts said.

U.S. State Department Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca said the gathering of anti-trafficking forces in Mexico is a welcome sight. He leads the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

“It used to be that one person here or one person there would carry the issue, but if they were killed, the movement was stalled or drastically set back,” he said. “We are now seeing the beginning of consensus against human trafficking started in Mexico. There has been a recognition that traffickers are preying on people.”

Last year, the Mexican government gave 4 million pesos — about $300,000 — to the effort, which advocates said is not enough.

Studies are underway in Mexico to try to estimate the depth and breadth of human trafficking, to provide more preventive education and to push for more prosecutions.

There is still much work to be done, experts said. Education and awareness are just getting geared up in some places, and not all state governments are on board with the fight. It’s unclear who is associated with the traffickers, and the number of investigations has been lagging far behind the number of reported trafficking crimes.